The New Dylan Film

It's Worth Seeing

If you’re a lover of American music, even if you’re a bit unfamiliar with Bob Dylan’s story and music, you’ll enjoy the new film about him, A Complete Unknown. It centers things on the music and the scene, and excels in its depiction of both, particularly strengthened by an amazing performance by Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, and a very strong one by Timothée Chalamet as Dylan. Also, it avoids the kinds of smug arrogances that both the conservative and the Dylan-lover are likely to fear when they hear about a film like this.

Part of its success is that, in dealing with such an interesting subject with so many potential connections to others, it gives itself two key limits:

First, it confines its telling of Dylan’s story to the time from his arrival in New York City’s Greenwich Village, to his famous—and at the time controversial—“going electric” set at the Newport Folk Festival of 1965.

Second, it refuses to try to figure Dylan out. The title refers both to his status upon arriving in NYC, and to the fact that neither the characters he meets, nor our scriptwriters can figure him out; the latter don’t even try to, and portray the efforts of the characters, particularly his girlfriends of the period, “Sylvie Russo”(based on Suze Rotolo) and Joan Baez, to peel back his defenses, as doomed to failure.

On that second limitation, that means that the Dylan here is played as a kind of mumbling genius, sly, relentlessly driven to song-write, funny, often cruel, keeping things vague and poetic when other characters get too close, nudging them into “going with a flow” that is he has orchestrated or improvised, and yet capable of instant and generous connection with fellow musicians, immediate insight into the games of the bohemian society forming around the bright candle of his art, and similarly quick to draw deeper meanings from current events, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis. As some reviewers have said, the film suggests that the Dylan of this period can thus only be understood through his songs, which is why it lingers upon them, with Chalamet’s amazing singing (and playing?!) making this possible.

That depiction is largely true—the best review I’ve read so far is one by Jonathan Lack, a “Dylanologist” who has studied the relevant footage from this period and lectured on the D.A. Pennebaker documentary Don’t Look Back—and Lack says the “film certainly understands Bob Dylan.”

But this second limitation comes with a cost.

To explain, a bit more about Lack’s review, which you might want to read first, since it is overall far better than what I can give you. His big beef with the film, which he otherwise likes fine, is that it is unfair to both Joan Baez and “Sylvie Russo,” and he suggests the writers and director are thus being unjust to women generally. I don’t accept that suggestion, but Lack is clearly correct that the depiction of Baez is on the unkind side, or differently put, that the depiction of her with Dylan is off:

Yes, Baez and Dylan had an on-again/off-again relationship with plenty of ups and downs; but why can’t there be a single scene in the movie that illustrates the two enjoying one another’s company? Why is every interaction so competitive, toxic, and mean? I listen to their real-life duets from this period – like the 1964 Halloween concert immortalized on the sixth volume of The Bootleg Series – and hear two people having fun bouncing off each other, even – or especially – when they’re flubbing and failing to make their vocals gel…

The emphasis added there is my own, and I make it because that sentence captures the fact that the injustice there is also being done to Dylan. The writers got too governed by their “complete unknown” stance toward Dylan’s inner character, a stance that again, has definite tightening benefits—but they surrendered too completely before the imposing wall of his elusiveness.

To put it differently, granted that Dylan’s role-playing and guardedness were there from the start, we don’t see enough of the Dylan who was capable of some degree of openness and friendship, that is, enough of the Dylan who during this period could write songs as stunningly wise for a man his age about the mysteries and and ups and downs of love affairs, such as “Love Minus Zero/No Limit.”

(That song comes from the album, Bringing It All Back Home, which is probably my favorite of his from the 60s period, and remains a good entry point into his work. For a fine guide to his discography up through the 90s, get a library copy of Michael Gray’s magisterial tome Song and Dance Man (3rd ed.), and go to the first chapter.)

Admittedly, it would have been a tall order to capture the balance Lack and I are yearning for—and as Lack’s review will show you, it is not the case that the very-elusive Dylan depicted here is given no moments of spontaneous connection with others, or that he comes across as overall repellent. Particularly in the brilliant “plates” scene with Sylvie, he mainly comes across as limited, and of himself paying the costs of his deliberate self-limitations made, in part, for the sake of his artistry. Limitations underlined, and with those lines almost never crossed over, by our screenwriters, for the sake of their own artistry.

My main message is that this is a very good film, but I’ll end by contrasting it to a superior one which also deals with early folk scene for the sake of making a couple more observations. That film is Inside Llewyn Davis, by the Coen Brothers, which I wrote about in a piece subtitled “3 Cats, 2 Abortions, and 1 Failed Folk Singer.”

First, a comparison of these two films underlines the fact that A Complete Unknown at times is straining to find a storyline, a common problem for biopics, whereas Inside is a complete drama and work of art, capable of standing side-by-side with classic films or plays from any era.

Second, as I wrote in my review, the Coens went out of their way to make Inside a rather bleak and even anti-iconic portrayal of early-60s bohemia and its folk scene. That highlights a simultaneous strength and weakness of James Mangold’s film. It lovingly depicts the whole folk-scene Dylan is immersed in, and with at times an almost Jacques-Tati-like wide lens that captures many minor figures in the background of the main action. Dylan-nerds will know who some of those figures are, and enjoy seeing these snippets of portrayal. But the depiction is ultimately too-loving and too-celebratory. Dylan’s artistic triumphs, particularly his innovating of a new way of songwriting, are worth celebrating, as are the accomplishments of people around Dylan such as Pete Seeger, but I’ll just say this: little of the darker side of his bohemia, which lyrically is all over the album which immediately followed his debut of electric-songs at Newport, Highway 61 Revisited, is glimpsed in this film. Maybe that’s too much of my social conservative side speaking, but do listen to that album, its “Desolation Row” in particular, or view Inside Llewyn Davis if you haven’t, to get a sense of what I’m speaking of.

And if you liked this, check out my key Dylan essay “What Bob Dylan Means to Literature, and Song,” just linked, as well as my post on his biographical writing, “Bob D. and Thucydides.”